=Stanwood Mayor Sid Robert’s Herald Forum essay regarding affordable housing had many very valid and compassionate points (“We’ll need to be open to options for affordable housing,” The Herald, Jan. 13).
Though most of his observations were true and some obvious, one remark was wrong. He said that “the government is never a viable source to solve housing problems.”
If the government can create housing problems, it can obviously solve them by just doing what it does right. And he is wrong in one example that isn’t that unrepresentative of the free world. The government owns and operates 25 percent of Vienna, Austria’s housing. It has done this and more for nearly 100 years now. It was spurred by a declining life expectancy at the time.
This is extreme and I’m sure naysayers will poo-poo it. But I was talking to a student there from the U.S. who said that she could cover all her living expenses with what she paid for rent in Boston. America has traditionally built crime laboratories and soon-to-be-decrepit housing projects to help those in need of housing assistance. Vienna built beautiful structures of high quality materials with parks and convenient retail. These are buildings built for multiple centuries as Europe is prone to do.
Roberts may have a knack for hitting people’s political impulses, but he should be aware that Vienna boasts a remarkably low crime rate and is considered by survey after survey as the very most livable city worldwide. Ideology makes us stupid and I would suggest to the mayor that he refers to the real world when making sweeping political generalities.
Rick Walker
Snohomish
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